


surface of the sun

by snoot (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:52:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/snoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She touches her fingers to her eyelids and wishes that there was someone else to do it for her, to hold her and keep her shoulders from quaking and tell her that she is doing a good job, that she is beautiful, that she shouldn’t be so scared of a future she cannot see, and a past she cannot remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surface of the sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocchi/gifts).



> all of the little different headers were written by marina tsvetaeva & all of the dialogue bits were written by ee cummings.

A kiss on the forehead – erases misery. I kiss you on the forehead.

***

There are a lot of things that Rose has never told you, like her favorite color or how many pets she has had in her lifetime. Many of the things you wonder about are nothing worth asking after, you realize, whenever you see her poised at her alchemy table or fiddling with the pages of books off in a corner or standing in your doorway with the slightest hint of pink beneath her pallid cheeks.

You’ve spoken with Karkat about it many times but he always tells you that it isn’t important. Your legs cross and uncross and recross and you fidget involuntarily under his gaze because maybe it _is_ important, and maybe you will run out of words to say to her and there will be nothing left that she cares to share with you and that will be the end of it. Every second you spend with her, you are drowning in the fear that you will one day look up to find her arm in arm with someone else and the realization that you are still growing up washes over you. You are still growing up after all of these years, and it’s still as hard as it was on the first day, only now your Lusus isn’t around to comfort you.

You trust Rose. Some nights she takes your hands and holds them in hers and smiles that sad smile of hers that is too many years older than the rest of her. Your voice shakes as you whisper to her in the shadows, her face only half-lit in the flickering light you’ve created. “Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience,” you say. Her lips curve downward ever so slightly. “Your eyes have their silence. In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near.” She looks at you like she can see something that you once were, or have yet to become, and you can tell that it is something she doesn’t like. The twitch of her eyebrows is this last thing you see before your eyes close and you feel her lips press against the incandescent skin of your forehead. The light flickers out.

You wonder whether that kiss was for your sake or her own.

***

A kiss on the eyes – lifts sleeplessness. I kiss you on the eyes.

***

As the days go by she grows more and more anxious. Rose sits with her back straight, nose buried in a book, looking for answers that you aren’t even sure exist. Weeks at a time pass where she hardly says two words to you, and there is not much to be done. This was never what you imagined facing evil would feel like. All of this calculation and planning… It should have come second nature to you, but you were beginning to feel that it was all for naught.

Days pass and suddenly it is dark, and the door is open, and someone is waiting for you to wake up. Your eyes hardly have time to focus on them when you hear her mumbling, and you know it is Rose. Who else would it be? Her words are nothing more than garbled memories of whispers and spilled ink that have been forever locked away into her mind, tied so closely to any mention of her mother. She invites herself into your bed and the only thing you can think to do is hold her there, with her head pressed against your chest. You thought she had already drifted off to sleep when you heard her speak again.

“Your slightest look will easily unclose me,” she says. Her voice is distant and it seems almost like she is shouting at you from the other side of the world. “Though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens…” She hesitates. You know that she is just saying these things out of exhaustion, but part of you thinks that maybe Rose has really planned this out. As the room is thrust into silence, you think you can hear your blood pumping. Eternity passes you by before Rose’s voice rises quietly from the darkness. “Touching skillfully, mysteriously, her first rose.” You kiss each of her eyelids carefully and before you’re even finished, she is asleep.

***

A kiss on the lips – is a drink of water. I kiss you on the lips.

***

You are now certain that you are slowly dying of thirst. Colors have become too vibrant and even the orange of Rose’s robes seems gaudy, where before it had been the only thing you could picture her in. She takes you by the hand and leads you out into the hallway, away from where Dave and Karkat are bickering. The door slides shut and suddenly you are entirely alone as you have never been before.

“If you wish to be close to me,” she starts, voice shaking. Your eyes are too strained to focus. “I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending.” Beneath your ribcage, something is fluttering. Fangs graze your lips and as Rose turns her head slightly to the side, you think you see what she is trying to say. It is cryptic, and you cannot be sure, but her eye catches yours and from beneath dark lashes you think you can see the glint of something coming into the light. You struggle to find your voice.

“Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility,” you say. And suddenly you are looking down at the blood that is pooling at her collarbone, so dark and so sweet. “Whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing.” She lets out a shallow sound as you press your lips against her neck again, and her fingers tighten at your waist. You had not even felt them there before. Heat rises beneath your face as she pulls you up to kiss her lips, and you sink below the surface of the sun.

***

A kiss on the forehead – erases memory.

***

She awakens in her bedroom. Everything is awash in a sea of moonlight. For a moment Rose doesn’t move, and it is almost as if one world is being peeled away from another. If she dreamt, she does not remember it now. Beside her, in a crib, Roxy is sleeping. Rose’s eyes dart over to her corner of the room instinctually, one hand rubbing at her neck. She will never be as good of a mother as someone she once knew, but somewhere in the back of her mind she remembers being rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, being spoken to softly and kissed, though these may not be real memories. She is beginning to discover that lot of her memories aren’t real.

Rose lifts the baby from her crib, gently, as if she is the single most precious thing in the world. Many nights she will tell Roxy about flowers and springtime and fragility and love, but tonight she struggles to piece together words that she is sure she has heard before, a long, long time ago. “I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens,” she says quietly. “Only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”

She does not put Roxy back into her crib until her throat begins to tighten. Rose excuses herself from no one and goes out into the hallway to cry. She touches her fingers to her eyelids and wishes that there was someone else to do it for her, to hold her and keep her shoulders from quaking and tell her that she was doing a good job, that she was beautiful, that she shouldn’t be so scared of a future she could not see, and a past she could not remember.


End file.
